Ask a childish question, and expect to be treated like a child in the answer. A Fox News anchor tried to throw a curve ball at Bill Nye the Science Guy by asking why the newly discovered volcanoes on the moon
didn't cause climate change there, so Bill dumbs down his talk to a childish level which the anchor can understand him.

Wasted another Goblin Army in Terraria last night. Mined my first meteor--at the bottom of the ocean. Which was kind of nice because I didn't have to worry about meteor heads.

I woke up this morning to a city without power. My cell phone showed me that I was already an hour late for work. Lack of electricity was quite the hindrance on my morning routine. I think I tried to
turn on the lights about six times. After a freezing cold washing session, and several 4-way stops from non-functioning traffic lights, I made it to work. And, of course, our Internet connection was
down, so I wasn't able to do my project.

Another example of cops arresting a person without just cause and illegally erasing the data on their camera because they didn't want to be filmed. And this story
involves a dildo.

Sure, religious people will use all of the benefits that come out of it, but they just won't fund stem cell research. Well, too bad! Thanks to Obama and a judge's ruling, federally funded stem cell
is back on the menu!

The city council of South Bend, Indiana just donated $1,200,000 of their tax payer's money so that a private Catholic school could get a new football field. Oh, they didn't donate the money outright,
that would be a federal crime. No, instead, they bought some land and a building, and are now planning on paying to have the building demolished, so they can then donate the land to the religious school.
However, those sneaky child molester lovers couldn't quite pull the wool over the eyes of the Americans United for Separation of Church and State who are
sueing on behalf of the citizens.

Will the 9/11 World Trade Center memorial be allowed to display a gigantic mutilated I-beam that Christians believe is a sign from God? Granted, this I-beam is just one of the millions of pieces of
twisted metal at ground zero, but the Christians want to display it to honor their God, and the Christians that died in the attack. What about the Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, Pagans,
Sikhs, Jains, Baha'is, Shintoists and various others? Will these people be honored at the memorial? The American Atheists are
fighting for the rights of all of these people. Their demand is that
if the memorial isn't going to represent all religions and philosophies equally, they shouldn't be allowed to represent any.

Went to the dentist this morning. Lots of pokes and scrapes, but no cavities!

If you're wondering why the debt ceiling is so high, it's because during the Bush presidency, the Republicans voted to increase the debt ceiling
19 times. If you're wondering why it was necessary to increase the debt ceiling 19 times, it's
because of Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy.

Soloed my first goblin army in Terraria last night. It took a full day and night to kill all the bastards! Finished my hellavator, got a meteor hit, but I've yet to find it. Made a long runway across
the ground for catching fallen stars. It's also six layers deep, to capture all the meteorite if it hits.

The titles of Conservative groups are a wonderful example of Orwellian doublethink. For example, Focus On the Family tries to eliminate every form
of family except for their strict definition of family. New Yorkers For Constitutional Freedom is trying their damnedest to remove the constitutional freedom from all New Yorkers except the ones whose
lifestyles they agree with.

Another reason to boycott air travel. Ever since Thomas Sawyer was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2007, he's had to wear a urostomy bag to collect his urine. Well, last November, Sawyer was being
searched by a such a poorly trained TSA agent that the urostomy bag was ruptured, and Sawyer was covered in his own urine. TSA ensured him that they would correct the problem by training their agents more
throughly. So what happened? A couple of days ago, Sawyer was flying again. He told the TSA agent about his urostomy bag, but the agent didn't heed his warning, and squeezed the bag too hard, rupturing
it... again. For the second time, a TSA agent covered Sawyer in his own urine.
By the way, how many bombs has the TSA found? How many terrorists have they caught?

When NASCAR and God meet, you get a prayer about automotive companies and smoking hot wives.

When it comes to valedictorian in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, it's less about grades and more about being liked. Kymberly Wimberly had the highest GPA in her entire graduation class, but she wasn't
valedictorian, or even salutatorian. She was, however, black, and the teens chosen for valedictorian and salutatorians were white.

Al Franken sees through your silly anti-gay abuse of science. Republican Governor Scott Walker made it a requirement to have a photo ID to vote
in Wisconsin (screwing over the people who don't have driver's licenses). Now, he's closing down a bunch of DMVs, so people will have a harder time getting their state IDs to vote. Crafty!

Had a blast over the weekend. On Saturday I went to my friend Emily's 21st birthday bonfire. It was a whole lotta fun, and I met a lot of really cool people. The majority of Sunday was spent playing
Terraria. I soloed my first Eye of Chthulu, finished my full set of gold armor, upgraded to all gold tools, and maxed out my hearts full hearts and mana. Now I'm working on cracking open some orbs so I
can mine some meteorite ore.

Priests raping children = not a miracle. Red bacteria growing on bread that might be, with the right amount of imagination, transsubstantiated blood =
miracle!

Holy crap! Texas just approved standard science textbooks! You know, the kind that
actually talk about evolution! Are they being sneaky, or did they finally wise
up?

Valley Park Middle school in Toronto, Canada is using its cafeteria for Muslim prayers. I'm fine with prayer in school so long as it's not mandatory, and the administration isn't leading it. However,
I'm very much against their discrimination of menstruating women who are not allowed to participate in pray because God hates them for some reason. Pray in a public school is already on shaky ground, and
adding sexual discrimination just pushes it over the edge!

NonStampCollector has made a hilarious video about Noah's Ark Part 1 - Part 2.

My antithesis was seated next to me at the Olive Garden during lunch. I love black olives, ask for the dressing on the side, and don't care for their croutons. This guy asked for no olives, extra
croutons, and extra dressing. I would have explained to him how wrong his taste in salad was, but he was covered with tattoos and scary looking.

Chafing is never a good thing

Feeling: Sleepy

2011/07/22

Had a blast at Cedar Point yesterday with Emily, June, Sarah, John, George, and Troy. The lines were exceptionally short and I think from now on I'll only go during the weekdays.

If you see a stranger handing out candy to little kids, you'd probably confront the stranger or call the police. But what if they're trying to bribe your child with candy if they
memorize bible verses? And in Comic Sans font no less?!

The Cloyne Report studied how the Vatican has reacted to the massive sexual abuse scandal. Turns out that the Vatican hasn't bothered to implement any of the suggested methods they received to help
combat child abuse among their ranks.

If Marco Sauceda knew what was in store for him, he probably would have got a motel on March 15th, 2009. He was lounging in his house in Lufkin, Texas when, unbeknownst to him, a neighbor called the
police about a black man trying to kick down a nearby door. The Lufkin police sprang into action and arrived at Sauceda's house and barged their way in. Sauceda, who suffers from a mental disability and
doesn't speak English, had no idea what was going on. Terrified, he locked himself in his bathroom. The Lufkin police warned him that he was the suspect of a burglary case, which didn't do very much good,
since he couldn't understand what they were saying. Finally, the cops broke down the door, sprayed Sauceda with pepper spray, shot him with a pepper ball, beat him to the ground causing various injuries,
handcuffed him, and dragged him off to jail. Of course, the police had made a huge mistake--Sauceda was completely innocent and didn't even fit the description called in, though I guess to the Lufkin
police, all brown people look alike. Well, Sauceda had his day in court yesterday and was found, you guessed it, guilty of resisting arrest. Apparently, in Texas, it's a crime to not let cops break into
your home and arrest you for no reason. During the trial, the prosecution said that Sauceda's behavior (of not wanting to be wrongly arrested) led police to believe he was a criminal, which is why he not
only deserved violent abuse, but also a prison sentence. Judge Derek Flournoy, the man in charge of the case, even took it a step further and said that the police officers were the victims and that
Sauceda put them at risk! When sentencing time came, judge Derek "hard ass" Flournoy was poised to give Sauceda 6 months in jail, but because the jury wrote him a letter asking him to be lenient feeling
that Sauceda had suffered enough. Flournoy's idea of lenience means that Sauceda will have to spend a
month in prison and pay a $500 fine. Sauceda's attorney is seeking a civil suit against Lufkin, and I sure hope he takes there sorry asses down.

John Pierre of Living Witness Church of God In Christ received $250,000 in US taxpayer money to help out Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. About $135,000 of that money
never made it to the public and was instead spent on the Pierre's church or squandered. Pierre paid himself
$32,810 just for kicks, another $41,000 for living expenses, and $10,000 was given away to his friends.

Adenine, guanine, thymine, and cytosine... you're probably familiar with these as the four bases of DNA. Well, you're going to have to learn two new bases, 5-formylcytosine and 5 carboxylcytosine!
Scientists have discovered that cytosine has different variations that make a large impact to how we understand DNA.

Ooh Media, a company that places ads on Spokane Transit Authority busses was all set to deny an atheist group the right to have their ads placed on busses. The atheist group wanted to ads to read, "Are
you good without God? Millions are." However, Ooh Media decided that, even though they place hundreds of religious ads all the time, they don't want to offend anyone with non-religious ads. After being
publicly called out on their discriminatory practices, they changed their mind and agreed to let the ads run.

Why does the US government allow people to abuse patents like this? Lodsys, a company that doesn't actually make anything but very vaguely worded patents, is suing several game companies for violating
their patent of buying stuff in a phone app game. It doesn't matter that buying stuff in a game
predates cell phones, they still got their patent, and they're suing over it. I think the blame needs to rest on the US patent system, and I can't wait for one of these companies to file legal action
against the US patent system for being so out of touch.

If you go to a public school in India, you must read the Bhagavad
Gita (Hindu equivalent to the Christian bible). Imagine all the Christian students having the Hindu religion thrust down their throats? This is why it's important in the USA not to allow any religious
books to be forced on our public students.

Fox News continues to dig a deeper hole on the police corruption and phone hacking scandal of their parent company
News International. Now Bill O'Reilly is saying that the entire scandal doesn't matter because News of the World was a British tabloid.
Translation: If if didn't happen in 'Merica, it's not worth reporting. Furthermore, it doesn't matter if the International parent company may have been involved. That's not news! Now lets take the next
six hours to discuss Michelle Obama's fascist ploy to take away our children's cupcakes and replace them with carrots.

A couple of Rabbis endorse a book which says it's perfectly okay to murder non-Jews in order to protect the lives of Jews. They even say it's okay to murder children and pacifists
if they're not Jewish.

It doesn't matter if you worship a teapot, it doesn't matter if you don't believe in Allah, it doesn't matter if you don't think Mohammad was a prophet of Allah... all that matters is that your parents
were Muslim, and that's why you're a Muslim. This way of thinking is actually quite common among other Abrahamic religions. You're
Jewish, not if you follow the Jewish faith, but if your mother is Jewish. Want to know if you're Catholic? Were you baptised Catholic as an infant? Well, then you're Catholic.

They just redid all the wallpaper at the office I work at, and the glue smells like the plastic-rubber of beach balls and air mattresses. I love it.

What's the largest threat to Christians today? Josh McDowell says the Internet!
You know what? I agree with him. The reason: knowledge kills religion. Show a religious person a bunch of other religions and they will say they're silly, but then they tend to look at their own religion
and ask what parts of it are silly. Teach a religious person the scientific method and critical thinking skills and suddenly their na´ve views about blind faith fly out the window. Thunderf00t agrees.

Heading to Cedar Point tomorrow morning with my homies!

Why am I not playing Terraria right now?

Feeling: Happy

2011/07/19

Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin is asking the citizens of Oklahoma to perform rain dances to appease the
sky gods in hopes they will let some rain fall. Maybe they should sacrifice a virgin just to be safe?

Several of my friends are now playing Terraria. Can't wait to get a massive server going!

Finally, after about 5 weeks without any decent rain, we get a nice thunderstorm. It went from being hot and sunny to practically dark out in a matter of minutes.

I now have a gold pick, gold helm, silver armor, silver greeves, some demonite metal, and 20 GP in Terraria.

Emily and I went canoing on Saturday and saw lots of water plants and flowers, various minnows, some bluegill, a couple other fish we couldn't
identify, some lost beach balls, numerous snail shells, a spiny
softshell turtle, and a great blue heron.

We also went to the Lebanese festival in Flint. We ate delicious food, danced a form of the debka, and listened and watch musicians and dancers
respectively. They even had a nice firework display.

Some physicists have created a cloaking device that makes an object invisible in the standard visible light spectrum, though currently it only lasts for
110 nanoseconds.

The Bachmann family keeps losing ground to anyone with a modicum of sanity.

Why shouldn't a single person or group be allowed to own numerous news agencies? Because they act like Fox News. By now, most people have been made aware of the
phone hacking scandal at News International. I say "most", because if you are a watcher of Fox News, you probably
haven't heard anything about it. This is because Fox News is owned by the same person that owns News International, Rupert Murdoch. And since it is certainly not in his best interest for people to know
his company is involved in one of the worst news scandals in history, Fox News has been rather quiet about the whole affair. However, just recently, Fox and Friends finally decided to address this major
issue by saying it's no big deal.

Need golden armor

Feeling: Happy

2011/07/15

I spent every second of last night playing Terraria, and I plan to do the exact same thing tonight!

Eric Boiling of Fox News can't think of a single terrorist attack that occured during the George Bush Administration. Not one. Certainly not one
that happened in 2001. In Septemember. Around the 11th. While Bush was reading a children's book and not reacting.

I would attend this restaurant every day just to keep them and their awesome idea in business! Now if they could just ban cell
phones too!

One of the common arguments about Christianity is, even if Jesus wasn't the son of God, he was still a good moral and just man, worthy of emulation. Well, when you read the bible with a critical eye,
you'll discover this just isn't the case. Peter Brietbart explains in his short documentary: Part 1,
Part 2.

Penn & Teller have a show called "Fool Us" where aspiring magicians try to perform illusions that can fool the duo. Here are two of the more interesting magic tricks seen on the show by
John van der Put and Mathieu Bich.

I've been playing The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening for the Game Boy Color. It's a pretty awesome game and I love the references to the earlier games. The only thing that's really annoying me is
the message you get every time you touch a pot or rock without the power bracelet equipped. Even after you get the bracelet, you still get the message! Speaking of Zelda, A Link to the Past would be much
easier with a portal gun!

Awesome run of Super Mario Bros., where the guy finishes the game after scoring only 600 points! He exploits a few glitches, but it's still an
impressive run!

Neptune has just made it's first orbit around the sun since we discovered it back in 165 years ago. This
isn't a milestone for the planet, but it is for us.

Republican presidential candidates Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are taking some flack for signing the Marriage Vow, a document which not only demonize same-sex marriage and pornography, but also
says that black people are worse off now than they were during the years of
American slavery, because at least then they were raised by a man and
a woman. It's usually a bad idea to say people are better off as property.

Real Catholic TV has an interesting series of street interviews asking Irish people who were raised Catholic if they still practice Catholicism.
The majority of them say no, the few who do only do it to make other people happy. They then get upset because their religion is dying. Yeah, well, raping a bunch of little boys will do that to a religion.

Christopher Monckton, one of the largest opponents of science and global climate change, now thinks that he has a cure for HIV. Wow! Is there
anything this man can't do? Apparently, have credibility.

Catholic adoption agencies have been closing up shop in Illinois ever since the state said they could no longer discriminate against same-sex couples. This proves that those agencies care more about
spreading their dogma than they care about helping children. Well, let them close. There are secular organizations willing to
take up their slack and show that helping people is more important than
being a bigot.

I'm back!

Feeling: Content

2011/07/05

Vacation was amazing. Emily and I went up to St. Ignace on Friday, Tahquamenon Falls on Saturday, and Mackinaw Island on Sunday. I'll post pictures soon.

Some Catholics still hold to the idea that the Earth is the center of the universe and have the scriptures
to back it up.

Over the extended weekend I finally beat The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I had nearly beaten the game multiple times, but I finally decided to properly play it start to finish. I completed it
with 100% of the items, and killed Gannon off on the first try!

Richard Wiseman, the guy responsible for all those cool psychology videos on YouTube like the count the passes and the
color-changing card trick has a book out called Paranormality:
Why We See What Isn't There. This book did well in the UK, and several other countries, but Wiseman couldn't find a publisher in the USA. The reason? Publishers in the USA don't think a book that
talks about skepticism of the paranormal would sell in the USA. In fact, they even suggested that he change the book so that it suggests that ghosts and psychic powers are real! Talk about an insult!

On the fourth of July, I found people draped in red, white, and blue and asked them a simple question, "What year did the US declare independence from England?" It turns out patriotism is merely a
fashion, because it wasn't until the fourth person I asked that someone got it right, and even they didn't have much faith in their answer. However, I finally met my match with the manager of Buffalo
Wildwings who led her Quiz Bowl team to state champs. She schooled me in American History quite neatly.

Wouldn't it be cool if our urine actually stayed the came color of the liquids that we drank? You could drink grape juice and pee purple. You could mix lemonade and cherry juice and pee orange. Or what
if you drank a small amount of fruit punch, orange juice, lemonade, limeade, and blueberry juice and proceeded to pee a rainbow! How cool would that be?